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Bishop Foss 


PUBLISHED BY 


THE PHILADELPHIA LAYMEN'S ASSOCIATION OF 
THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH 
PHILADELPHIA, Pa., U.S. A. 


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REV. BISHOPsCYRUS*D.EOSS,, D; D.,, LED, 
RESIDENT BISHOP OF PHILADELPHIA 


Public Reception 


given to the 
Rev. Bishop Cyrus D. Foss, D.D., LL.D. 
on his return from India and Malaysia 


by the 
Ministry and Membership 


of the 


Methodist Episcopal Church 


in Philadelphia and Vicinity 


In the Arch Street Methodist Episcopal Church 
Philadelphia 


Thursday Evening, April 21, 1898 


Published by 
The Philadelphia Laymen’s Association of the 
Methodist Episcopal Church 
Philadelphia, Pa., U.S. A. 


PRESS OF 
TIMES PRINTING HOUSE 
725 CHESTNUT STREET 
PHILADELPHIA, PA., U. S. A. 


Digitized by the Internet Archive 
In 2023 with funding from 
Columbia University Libraries 


https://archive.org/details/publicreceptiongOOunse 


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Committee on Reception to 
REVeebishOr CYRUS Dar OSS “D.b, ales 


On his return from India. 


Bishop Foss. 

Hon. Robt. KE. Pattison. 
C@] Ce Hiancock. 

Hon. John Field. 

Jno. W. Boughton. 

F. W. Tunnell. 
Clarence D. Antrim. 
Arthur M. Burton. 


9 Rev. T. C. Murphey, D.D. 
10 Rev. S. W. Thomas, D.D. 
THOR EV. Osis GEHteLt.. DD: 
12 Charles Scott. 

13 Jno. K. James, M.D. 
14 Wm. H. Heisler. 
15 Rev. J. G. Bickerton. 


Philadelphia, April 21, 1898. 


16 Rev. T. B. Neely, D.D., LL.D., Chairman. 
T7eReval. Ba wyuch Dab: 

18 Rev. J. S. J. McConnell, D.D. 

I9 Rev. J. R. T. Gray, D.D. 

20 Avery D. Harrington. 

21 Rev. J. S. Hughes, D.D. 

22 Rev. W. L. McDowell, D.D. 

23 Rev. W. W. Ramsay, D.D. 


Introduction 


he Board of Bishops of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church selected the Rev. Bishop Cyrus D. Foss, 


D.D., LL.D., the Resident Bishop of Philadelphia, 

to visit officially the missions of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church in India and Malaysia. In pursuance of 
this appointment Bishop Foss started on his tour in the 
month of October, 1897, and returned in April, 1898. 

During his stay in India the bubonic plague continued 
its ravages among the people of that empire, but the Bishop 
passed through the dangers, endured the fatigue, and, in 
good health, completed his work. 

In view of his expected return to Philadelphia, the 
Preachers’ Meeting of the Methodist Episcopal Church, in 
the. City of Philadelphia and vicinity, appointed a Com- 
mittee to extend a welcome to the Bishop. 

The Committee was composed of the following minis- 
tets; I. B. Neely, J. 8. J... McConnell, S. W. Gehrett) S.w. 
Thomas, F. B. Lynch, T. C. Murphey, J. G. Bickerton, J. S. 
Hughes, J. R. T. Gray, W. L. McDowell, and W. W. 
Ramsay. 

The Philadelphia Laymen’s Association appointed the 
following laymen as a Committee to act in conjunction with 
the Committee from the Preachers’ Meeting: C. C. Han- 
cock, John Field, John E. James, Arthur M. Burton, 
Clarence D. Antrim, William H. Heisler, Robert K. Pattison, 
Charles Scott, J. W. Boughton, F. W. Tunnell, and Avery 
D. Harrington. The Combined Committee met and 
organized by electing the Rev. T. B. Neely, D.D., LL. D., 
Chairman, and the Rev. F. B. Lynch, D. D., Secretary. 

The Committee decided to give Bishop Foss a public 
reception in the Arch Street Methodist Episcopal Church, 
on Thursday evening, the twenty-first of April. It adopted 
a written address of welcome, prepared by the Rey. Dr. T. 
B. Neely, and arranged the programme of exercises for the 
reception. 

On the evening designated the Arch Street Church 
was beautifully decorated, in harmony with the spirit of the 
occasion and the auditorium was filled by a magnificent and 
representative audience. 


Programme 


President, 


REV. Ws Wo-RAMSAY, DP Di: 
Pastor of the Arch Street Church. 


Vice-Presidents, 
Cc. C. HANCOCK, Ex-Governor R. E. PATTISON, and the 
Hon, JOHN: FIELD. 


SINGING— “‘ All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name.” 


Announced by Rev. J. S. Hughes, D. D. 
Presiding Eider of the West District. 


PRAYER— By Revo il C, Murphey), Dib: 


READING OF THE SCRIPTURES, by Rev. J. R. T. Gray, D. D. 
Presiding Elder of the North District. 


SINGING— “ FRrom Greenland’s Icy Mountains.” 


Announced by Rev. W. L. McDowell, D. D., 
Presiding Elder of the Northwest District. 


READING AND PRESENTATION OF ADDRESS OF WELCOME 
To BisHop Foss—Rev. T. B. Neely, D. D., LL. D., 


Pastor of the Union M. H. Church. 


RESPONSE AND ADDRESS— 
By Bishop Cyrus D. Foss, D.D., LL. D. 


SINGING— “My Country! ’tis of Thee.” 


Announced by Rev. H. A: Monroe, D. D., 
Presiding Elder of the Philadelphia District of Delaware Conference. 


BENEDICTION— Byikeviels Bs Lynehy(D: D:, 


Presiding Elder of the South District. 


Prof. William G. Fischer, Precentor. 
5 


OPENING REMARKS— 


In opening the meeting Dr. Ramsay said : 

‘We have come from all parts of this great city that as 
ministers and members of its more than one hundred Methodist 
churches we may manifest our devout gratitude to our Heavenly 
Father for the kindly providence which has returned to his home 
and friends, after his circuit of the globe, our greatly loved Bishop 
Foss, to whom we would extend a cordial welcome and cheerful 
Sieeting. 


PRAYER— By Rev. i.C,) Murphey, (obs 


A PRAYER FOR THE NATION. 


Dr. Murphey offered a prayer, in which he besought the blessing 
of God upon the country in the midst of its present anxieties and 
perplexities. ‘‘O Lord God Almighty,’’ he said, in part, ‘‘ Thou 
art the all-wise, the all-mighty, and we plead with Thee for peace. 
Thou understandest the condition of our nation, and the condition 
of the neighboring nation, and the nature of their differences. We 
earnestly pray for Thy divine interposition. But if it is necessary 
that war should prevail, we beseech Thee for mercy. Grant wisdom 
to the President of the United States and a clear and true perception 
of the difficulties which beset his course, and moral courage for 
his duties. Bless his counsellors. Bless our soldiers and sailors. 
May God prepare them for whatever may be awaiting them in the 
future.’’ Dr. Murphey closed his prayer with a reference to Bishop 
Foss and the occasion which had brought the large congregation — 
together. 


Address of Welcome 


The formal address of welcome, read by Dr. Neely is as 
follows : 


To the Reverend Bishop Cyrus D. Foss, D. D., LL. D. 


Greeting: ‘‘Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our 
Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ.’’ 

The undersigned Committee of the ministers and laymen of 
the Methodist Episcopal Church’ in Philadelphia, voicing the 
sentiments of the clergy and the churches in Philadelphia and 
vicinity, desire to extend to you a cordial welcome on your return 
from your episcopal visitation to the missions of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church in the vast empire of India and Malaysia. 

For almost ten years you have been the Bishop of our denomi- 
nation resident in the City of Philadelphia, and, during these 
years, the Church has respected and honored you not only for your 
high office, but also for what you were and are in yourself and for 
the noble work you have done in the pulpit, and in the various 
executive departments of church activity. 

Your lofty Christian character and your manifested interest in 
the affairs of our denomination in this great City and in its imme- 
diate vicinity, while at the same time you were occupied with the 
presidency of other and widely scattered conferences and with the 
general work of the denomination in this and other lands, has 
greatly impressed us, and your sympathy manifested toward 
individuals in time of sickness or other calamity has steadily 
strengthened the feeling that you were one of us as well as one 
with us. 

When last October, under appointment of the Board of Bishops, 
you started from this City on your long journey to distant India, 
you were followed by the fervent prayers of preachers and people 
of our churches that you might have a safe journey, and that 
having discharged your supervisional duty in that expansive field, 
you might be brought back to us in health and strength. 

During the period of your absence, which covered more than 
six months, you have traveled many miles by sea and by land. 
You have made the circuit of the globe and in addition have 
traveled as many miles as more than equal the diameter of the 
earth. Notwithstanding the perils by sea and the dangers by land, 
and the fact that your duties carried you through a great section 
where a terrible epidemic was raging, yet through a Gracious 


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Providence you have been kept in health and strength, and now 
that you have returned after this long journey of thirty-three 
thousand miles, and this long absence, we greet and welcome you 
on your return, and come with thanksgivings to Almighty God 
that He has answered the many prayers that have been offered by 
our ministers and members, in that He has sustained you in the 
discharge of your episcopal duties, defended you from danger, and 
returned you to us in safety and in health. 

In addition to this brief and formal address of welcome, we 
call your attention to this assemblage of preachers and people who 
have convened to-night to greet you and to extend to you their 
glad welcome, and these are but the representatives of the more 
than thirty-six thousand members and probationers in the one 
hundred and fifteen Methodist Episcopal Churches in the City of 
Philadelphia, to say nothing of those of adjoining sections. 

One and all, both ministers and people, we welcome you, and 
pray that God may continue to bless you, that he may preserve 
your life and strength for many years, and that he may still make 
you a wise leader in the Church Militant and ultimately reward you 
in the Church Triumphant in heaven. 

With great respect we present this address. 


The address was signed by the following : 


From the Ministry. From the Laity 
T. B. NEELY, C; C HANCoCcE, 
J. S. J. McCoNNELL, JOHN FIELD, 
S. W. GEHRETT, JOHN KE. JAMES, 
S. W. THOMAS, ARTHUR M. BuRTON, 
F. B. LYNCH, CLARENCE D. ANTRIM, 
T. C. MURPHEY, Wo. H. HEISLER, 
J. G. BICKERTON, RoBT. E. PATTISON, 
J. S. HUGHES, CHARLES SCOTT, 
J. R. T. Gray, J. W. BOUGHTON, 
W. L. MCDOWELL, F. W. TUNNELL, 
W. W. RAMSEY, AVERY D. HARRINGTON, 


keception Committee. 


After reading the address of welcome, Dr. Neely, on behalf of 
the committee, presented to Bishop Foss a beautifully engrossed 
copy of the address in album form and bound in seal. 


THE RESPONSE OF. BISHOP FOSS. 


Bishop Foss then arose and gave the following 
response and address on his recent travels; the audience 
rising and greeting him with the ‘ Chautauqua Salute.” 


Address of Bishop Foss 


Mr. President and Christian Friends : : 


Before I utter a single word in glad and grateful acknowledg- 
ment of this very cordial and honorable address, I must be allowed 
to indulge my heart for an instant in recalling those beloved and 
lamented fellow-workers of ours who were with us last September 
and are not visibly present now. ‘‘ They rest from their labors and 
their works do follow them ;’’ and our hearts follow them in high 
congratulation on the triumph which they have attained, and in 
solemn sadness on account of our sorrow. 

Mr. President, I can find no words to utter the high apprecia- 
tion which I feel in my heart of hearts for this welcome which has 
been so admirably voiced in the address of the Committee of 
Ministers and Laymen,—men whom I am glad to honor,—and also 
has had expression to my eyes in the presence of this great con- 
course, and in the smiling faces and gleaming eyes of this multitude 
of the picked Methodists, and other Christians as I perceive, of 
Philadelphia and its vicinity. 


SOME GENERAL REMARKS. 


Permit me, before addressing myself to the chief purpose of 
my standing here to-night and of your coming here to hear me, a 
few observations of a general sort such as would occur to any 
tourist, relating to matters which must arouse the attention of 
every intelligent observer who travels widely in the East—matters 
confessedly not of the highest moment, but of very curious and 
often of greatly delighted interest to men who have the opportu- 
nities which I have thus enjoyed. 

In making the circuit of the earth I have traveled 33,000 miles 
—21,000 of them by sea—sixty-six days on almost all the seas and 
oceans in the north temperate and northern part of the torrid zones, 
with no hurricanes, no storm at all until I had been forty days on 
many seas, then two or three days and nights a little exciting to a 
landsman, but nothing to a sailor, not an hour of fog, and not a 
minute of that grievous central disturbance which makes the sea 
such a terror to multitudes of my fellow-men. On reaching Bombay 
I was furnished at the outset with abundant knowledge concerning 


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that great scourge which devastated that city and some other places 
in India in the winter of 1896-7, the bubonic plague. It is chiefly 
a winter disease ; last summer it almost disappeared. When I was 
in Bombay in November and December the death-rate from the 
plague ranged from four to fourteen a day, touching no Europeans 
at all; in January and February it rapidly increased ; and I have 
just received this week a letter from Bishop Thoburn in which he 
states concerning it some particulars such as I have not lately seen 
in print, which I give you very briefly. The letter bears date Bombay, 
March 8th. He says: ‘‘I find all well, but the plague has not abated 
in the least. The deaths yesterday were 193; and the daily death- 
rate has been in the neighborhood of 200 for two weeks past. 
Europeans still escape, for the most part.’’ So that, although the 
efforts to stamp out the plague have been partially successful, there 
is deep apprehension and fear that it may spread to other great cities 
in India on the eastern coast, whose filthy condition certainly invites 
it. No words can well express the admiration which the British 
Government and the India department of it deserve for their heroic 
efforts, with unstinted use of money and of all available scientific 
skill, to limit, and, if possible, to destroy this awful scourge ; and the 
same may be said of the efforts to relieve the famine, which had 
pretty much ceased when I reached India last November. A great 
many deaths have occurred during the winter as the indirect conse- 
quence of the famine, and the statements made by Mr. Julian 
Hawthorne in the ‘‘ Cosmopolitan’’ magazine, which were so 
severely criticised, according to the best information I could get in 
India did not exaggerate the dreadful consequences of the famine. 


BRITISH RULE IN INDIA. 


I referred to the British Government. One of the marvels otf 
history—one of the most striking series of events in it, in any 
generation and in any land, may be summed up in the phrase, 
‘‘ British Rule in India.’’ How it came to pass that a nation having 
its chief seat of empire on a little island, on the west coast of 
Europe, should have been able to subjugate a territory as large as 
the United States east of the Mississippi River, and to bring almost 
all the native rulers under its authority, and since to hold disarmed 
a population of two hundred and eighty-seven million people, and 
give them the best government by far that they have ever had, and 
to do this with only eighty thousand British soldiers, and with 
British residents (men, women and children all put together), less 
than one hundred and ninety thousand,—surely this is one of the 
greatest marvels recorded in authentic history. It sounds like the 


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wildest romance; but is the solid and magnificent achievement of 
one of the great governing and colonizing nations of the globe— 
bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh ; and I want to add this, in 
this time when I will not say we greatly need (for any other reason 
than a sympathetic reason) the friendship of the mother country : I 
want to say this, that, traveling around the globe, I have met with 
Englishmen—a great many of them—of all ranks of society, 
several earls, more lords, officers of the army and navy and of the 
merchant marine, merchants and barristers, missionaries and their 
critics, clergymen and mechanics; and have talked with them or 
heard them talk ; and I have not met a single Englishman, even in 
the freedom of the conversations on board vessels where we were 
together many days, which are sure to loosen men’s tongues if 
anything can, I have not met a single Englishman who said in 
my hearing, at any time, any word concerning our country that 
was not a word of respect and friendship. [Applause.] And when, 
on board English ships, called to conduct religious services, I 
prayed in the same breath, more than once, for the Queen 
Empress of India, and for the President of the United States, the 
rustle of satisfaction and gladness amounted almost to applause ; 
and Iam sure you will all heartily join me in saying ‘‘God save 
the Queen ’’ and ‘‘ God bless Old England.’’ [Applause. ] 


CURIOUS THINGS. 


Among the curious things which I am to speak to you about, 
in a few words, in this introduction to the graver speech which is 
to come later, I cannot pass by the striking and very disgusting 
spectacles which I saw in Bombay, in the methods employed in 
disposing of the bodies of the dead, in the Burning Ghats and the 
Towers of Silence. Imagine, if you can anywhere outside the 
heathen world, a vast enclosure as large as one of the largest 
blocks in this city, surrounded by a stone wall fifteen feet in height 
and within it, every day fifteen, twenty or one hundred corpses 
burned to ashes on separate piles of wood, right in the heart of the 
city ; so that as you drive along the fine boulevard most disgusting 
smoke and odors offend your senses. The Towers of Silence, used 
by the Parsees only, are great circular walls twenty-five feet in 
height and one hundred feet in diameter, with iron gratings near 
the bottom on which the bodies of the dead are laid ; while hun- 
dreds of vultures hover around in expectation, pounce down upon 
them from their roost on the wall or from their flight in the sky, 
and in about ten minutes every particle of flesh is gone from the 
bones. From the windows of Bishop Thoburn’s house I first made 


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the acquaintance of the omnipresent—friends (shall I say?) of 
humanity in India (because of their service as scavengers)—the 
crows ; which gather by the thousand in the most populous quar- 
ters of all the larger cities of India—tens of thousands—with their 
perpetual ‘‘caw! caw!’’ so that you can scarcely hear another 
sound, morning and evening. They are not quite so big as our 
crows and wear a kind of light gray sash around their necks ; they 
will come to the window ledge close by you, and leer at you and 
scold you and call you names till you get up and drive them away, 
and then come back in a few minutes and repeat the process until 
you really feel mean and wonder whether you are such a scoundrel. 
They snatch the bread and butter out of the hands of the children ; 
they rob the cook going from the cook-house to the dining-room of 
the victuals on the plate; in many ways they are a perpetual 
annoyance. But not more so than the monkeys in some of the 
cities of northern India, (which are more disgusting still), and are 
worse thieves, by far. Many atime a demure monkey, apparently 
asleep, only waits until some passer-by comes with food to their 
taste, carelessly carried, when, with a sudden stroke of his long 
hand, he will bring it all down upon the street, and twenty mon- 
keys, which have been notified to be on hand, will at once grab it 
up and run away with it. Then there are the flying foxes, those 
enormous bats, of which I saw thousands flying over the parks in 
Lucknow and Cawnpore, weighing about one pound and a-half each, 
with the head, shoulders and body of a fox, as perfect as you can 
imagine, and with wings that spread four feet from tip to tip (I 
measured some after they were dead). I will tell you of a more 
pleasing sight, the ‘‘ pigeon orchid’’ of Malaysia, an inch and a- 
half in length, whiter than the whitest lily, with the perfect form 
of a white pigeon with its two wings spread and its tail raised. 
The remarkable fact is that myriads of these blooms, which grow 
wild, come out once every month in the year in the torrid zone, 
absolutely on the same day—every one of these millions—and the 
next day they fade. And now, what is still more surprising, in 
the islands near by the same beautiful flower blossoms monthly in 
the same way, every one on the island simultaneously, but on a 
different day from the blossoming day in Singapore. 

No man can go to Rangoon, Burmah, without being told that 
one of the greatest sights there is the working elephants. There 
are very great lumbering interests in Rangoon. I went to one of 
the large saw-mills where I saw nine working elephants, which 
carried the logs to the saws and brought away the slabs, then 
brought away the timbers and piled them up. I saw two of them 


T5 


piling bridge timbers thirty-five feet long, from sixteen to twenty- 
two inches square, weighing from two to three tons each; making 
them into piles twelve feet high, that were never touched by any 
human hands; but these beasts, with intelligence superior to that 
of many of the human natives of the country, under the direction 
of drivers sitting on their necks, raised the great timbers and 
slipped them to their places as deftly as you can imagine. 


MISSIONARY PROGRESS. 


Let me now address myself to the condition and progress of 
the Christian religion, and especially the Methodist type of it, in 
the British Empire in India. I wish first to make a general state- 
ment—a very brief one—and then to impress it upon your minds by 
a few vivid pictures. This is the total plan of what I shall now 
say ; and I know that the rhetoricians would criticise me at once, 
some of them, for turning the subject round, and beginning 
where I ought to end, but I will tell you frankly my reason; I am 
so sure that I can make good to you the thesis with which I begin 
this part of my remarks that I do not hesitate to tell you at the 
outset my deliberate conclusion on the subject of which I speak. 
Now although I have some notes before me, you will see I am not 
going to read you an essay ; these sheets are simply the chains by 
which I am trying to hold myself, so that I may not trespass 
unduly on your patience to-night. The collective judgment I have 
formed is about this, that Christianity, and the Methodist type of 
it, in India, have brought forth in this generation a volume of 
Christian evidences of greater value to the world than all the 
volumes of Christian evidences that can be gathered from the 
libraries of the theologica] seminaries of both hemispheres ; that in 
our time, in the lifetime of the younger men here before me now, 
the Christian religion has so taken hold in the vast empire of India, 
among almost three hundred million people, as almost to enable 
the careful observer to see the very foot-prints of the ever-living 
Christ all over that land; and I shall hardly exaggerate my sense 
of the truth on this subject if I should add that if the too laggard 
church could but come a little nearer to her divine-human Leader, 
his fresh foot-prints would be seen everywhere among the nations. 

The difference between the books and the sight of such 
evidences of Christianity as I have had the privilege to witness in 
the recent months, is all the difference between reading a treatise 
on the expansive power of steam and walking the deck of a mag- 
nificent six thousand ton steamer plunging through the billows 
in the midst of the ocean, and feeling the constant throb of its hot 


16 


heart, until in twelve days it has crossed the great Pacific. I find 
not how, in any words which I have been able to frame with tongue 
or pen, to make any statement strong enough to voice my own 
burning conviction that the Lord Jesus Christ is taking India. 
Call to mind, if you please, Judson in Burma, toiling, praying, 
fearing, hoping for many a weary year before he had asingle con- 
vert, and Maclay similarly waiting in China; and then hear the 
facts which Iam about to state, that only forty years ago, under 
appointment and advice of those two great missionary leaders of 
the church, both whose names are especially sacred in this City of 
Brotherly Love, John P. Durbin and Matthew Simpson, William 
Butler went out to plant Methodism in India; and then consider 
well what I now tell you; I wish these figures might be burned 
into your memory; that we now have in India and Malaysia 
seventy-seven thousand nine hundred and sixty-three communi- 
cants of the Methodist Episcopal Church, of whom thirty-eight 
thousand seven hundred and fifty were baptized within two years ; 
one thousand two hundred and fifty-nine schools, with thirty- 
one thousand eight hundred and seventy-nine pupils; two 
thousand four hundred and eighty-five Sunday Schools, with 
eighty-three thousand two hundred and twenty-nine scholars; 
two hundred and nine Epworth Leagues with ten thousand three 
hundred and thirty-seven members; two hundred and twenty-six 
Foreign Missionaries, including the ministers, their wives and the 
missionary teachers of the Women’s Foreign Missionary Society ; 
and native laborers in various ranks of employment, making a 
staff of three thousand five hundred and thirty-seven paid workers ; 
and that the total value of our church, school and other properties 
is three million six hundred and seven thousand nine hundred and 
eighty rupees. 


SOLID FOUNDATIONS. 


The foundations of our work in India have been broadly and 
solidly laid in both the great departments of missionary labor, the 
educational and the evangelistic. Some missionary societies devote 
themselves almost entirely to education, and the missionaries are 
little more than schoolmasters; some, almost entirely to evangel- 
istic work. Our Church does both, and does both strongly and 
well; and makes the two co-operate with and reinforce each other. 
Some ten years ago, when that little bunch of consecrated and 
sagacious optimism called James M. Thoburn (just then elected to the 
Missionary Episcopacy), began his first tour among the churches 
in America before he went out to India and Malaysia, he startled 


17 


the Church by saying that he hoped to live to see the day when 
there would be ten thousand converts under the care of our Church 
in India alone ina single year ; and we heard it with wonder—some 
of us raising the question whether he was the wildest of fanatics 
or a courageous and veritable prophet of the living God. Iam 
thankful to say that I was one of those who at the time chose the 
latter horn of this dilemma; the events of the last ten years have 
abundantly justified that belief, and instead of ten thousand there 
have been twelve thousand, thirteen thousand, one year eighteen 
thousand converts in a single year, brought to Christian baptism 
under the labors of our missionaries in India and Malaysia! And 
these numbers might be vastly augmented if only—as one of our 
native pastors said in my hearing—we could provide ‘“‘ holders up”’ 
of the converts, that is, plain, comparatively illiterate but genu- 
inely converted, pastor teachers, who should train them in Christian 
knowledge and guard them against the temptations sure to assail 
them. 


NAINI TAL. 


I cannot get on with these chains. (And the Bishop flung his 
notes to the floor.) Let me show you one picture I have to draw. 
After only four days in Bombay, by a slow three days’ journey 
on cars where you have to provide your own bed, bedding and 
towels,—I reached a beautiful spot among the mountains—itself 
6,000 feet above the level of the sea,—Naini Tal, which means the 
‘‘ Lake of the Goddess Naini.’’ It is a wonderful lake—I know of 
nothing in this country to suggest it, unless it be Lake Mohonk. 
Ninai Tal is twice as green and ten times as big, and is surrounded 
by mountains 1,500 feet in height, on whose steep sides, embowered 
in the greenest foliage, are seen the elegant palatial homes of 
summer residents and English officials, and sanitariums for mission- 
aries, and Christian schools and churches. From one of the near 
heights I got my first glimpse of ‘‘ The Snows,’’—as they call them 
all over India,—a very diminutive name for the snow-clad Himalaya 
Mountains ; and there I saw, one night before sunset, and the 
next morning at sunrise, sixty-three peaks—the highest of them 
25,700 feet in height and the lowest, 20,000 feet. As the setting 
sun withdrew its rays from them, one after another, they seemed 
to withdrew themselves almost, and to turn into sullen heaps 
of gray ashes, as darkness quickly covered them ; but out of it, the 
next morning, at break of day, they rose before my eyes in glorious 
resurrection and majestic state. It was a sight, never to be 
described nor forgotten. But when I came down from that vision,— 


18 


which can never be equaled for me in this world,—I had a still 
profounder impression. Ihad just seen, on a slope of the Himalayas 
the glacier from which one of the fountains of the Ganges bursts 
forth. I then saw at Naini Tala grander sight, the spot where Wil- 
liam Butler had stood in God’s naine when he smote the rock of 
heathenism, and lo! India Methodism !—and the rill had become 
a river. For four days I was there, watching its wondrous flow, at 
a District Conference, in which were included an Epworth League 
meeting, a temperance meeting, and various other meetings. 
Some fifty native teachers and local preachers and stewards and 
class leaders were present ; and also,—and I cannot mention it 
without a quick heart-throb,—one of the teachers of the Woman’s 
Foreign Missionary Society,—Miss Budden, of Pithoragarh, with 
her forty-nine girls and women—native Christians, brought to 
Jesus largely by her instrumentality, whom shehad led nine days’ 
march over the rough mountain paths, twelve miles each day, 
carrying on their heads their tents and their food and their 
blankets—twenty-five pounds on the head of every woman,—ten 
pounds on the head of every girl,—nine days’ march, to be with us 
four days in the corner of our humble little church, and listen, and 
wait, and wait and listen, and sing and get blessings from God,— 
as they did in rich abundance; and nine days back again over 
rough mountains and along weary marches to their work again. 
That was my first strong impression of the river flowing in India ; 
but I stood on its banks in many other places, presently. 


A CAMP-MEETING IN INDIA. 


A short time after, with the Rev. Dr. Goucher, who was my 
constant attendant and helper in all this visitation, and with Bishop 
Thoburn, I spent four days at the Hathras camp-meeting in 
northern India. At the railroad station we found a line of our 
native Christians and of our children from the schools, with a few 
of our American missionaries at the head of the line, drawn up on 
each side of the path, a third of a mile in length, to receive us with 
a band of native music, with the sound of fire-crackers and other 
explosives, and with lofty songs; because we came as the repre- 
sentatives of the great mother Church, which had made possible to 
them the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. I can- 
not describe the scenes of those four days, as under the spreading 
banyan trees we joined these people in their religious services. We 
tried to get at the questions whether the converts were converted, 
and whether this was really Christianity that we saw, and the 
genuine Methodist type of it. In our daily attendance of the 


19 


meetings we had interpreters sitting beside us to keep us posted. 
On the Sabbath morning several of the recent converts were bap- 
tized. There was among them an old gray-haired man who for 
many years had been a fakir, but had forsaken his idolatry, and 
was sitting at the feet of Jesus. When I was about to administer 
the rite of Holy Baptism to him, after he had been closely ques- 
tioned by Bishop Thoburn, the old man, as his last break from 
idolatry, took off his rosary (I have it here) and cast it down at my 
feet as though to say, ‘‘My heathenism is at an end; tell my 
‘friends in America that my only trust is in the precious blood of the 
Lamb.’’ I prize this fine rosary, not only because of its intrinsic 
value, but because of its associations with the religious superstition 
of its pagan owner almost from his boyhood. j 


A HEATHEN MELA. 


A few weeks later while attending one of our conferences— 
the Northwest India Conference—at Allahabad, I had the oppor- 
tunity to visit one of the great heathen melas. A mela is any 
festival—generally a religious festival—and we have wisely adopted 
the word for our camp-meetings. This heathen mela is fixed at 
Allahabad for certain weeks of January and February every year ; 
and tens of thousands of pilgrims (sometimes as many as ninety or 
a hundred thousand in a single day), from anywhere within fifty or 
a hundred miles, come with their blankets and with a little food, to 
bathe at the confluence of the Ganges and the Jumna Rivers, the 
most sacred place in all India, believing that to bathe in those waters 
gives better promise of release from sin than anything else that 
they know of. Numberless thousands, I suppose five, ten, or 
twenty thousand gather ina few hours. Between a great bluff on 
which the city is situated and the junction of these rivers, there is 
a vast stretch of sand, a mile and a quarter in width, traversed by 
sprinkled paths. On both sides of the broad avenue are many 
hundreds of beggars, the most filthy and disgusting you can con- 
ceive of, exposing every manner of physical deformities, nine- 
tenths of which are simulated, and among them scores—I think 
there were a hundred or more, especially ‘‘ holy men’’ (as they call 
the fakirs) ; one I saw who had his left foot securely planted above 
his right knee, and held there for years. His penance was to be 
twelve years standing on his right foot, with a little board under 
his breast and a cord attached to that fastened to a post behind him, 
supporting one-third of his weight; he was esteemed especially 
holy because for eleven years he had not had his left foot on the 
ground. Another had one arm extended perpendicularly until it 


20 


had grown as stiff as iron—could not by any possibility be brought 
down. Others were buried in dust so that nothing but the nose 
and mouth protruded ; and every expiration of the breath blew a 
cloud of dust into the air. There were several on beds of spikes. 
One had been on his spike bed for five years ; another for more than 
six; another for nine; twelve being the maximum penance. 

Dr. Goucher, who was with me, is a great collector ; somehow 
he is a sort of magnet to which things come. He came back from 
one of those beds of spikes with three or four of the spikes; he 
had tried to get the man lying on one of them to sell him some, 
but the answer was that he could not possibly do that. ‘‘ Well,’ 
said the doctor, ‘‘ let me take some ;’’ and catching the gleam of 
some copper coinsin the doctor’s hands the devotee turned his head 
the other way while the doctor took some and gave him.a handful 
of coin. The spikes are three inches in length, sharpened at both 
ends, driven into the board about an inch, and on several hundred 
such spikes the poor fellows lie until their callous backs and legs 
become somewhat accustomed to them ; but it isa matter of twelve 
years, or else the thing is a failure. (Here is one of the spikes.) 
Do you think I can put into words the impressions with which I 
left that place (after some hours of wandering about) concerning 
the disgusting and ruinous heathenism in which hundreds of mil- 
lions of my fellow-creatures are held in India? Beside the great 
pathway was a little booth in which four or five native preachers 
(two of whom understood English) were preaching the gospel ; and 
I stopped and found one who could interpret for me. Presently 
there came up an old man ; a little crowd gathered ; he heard with 
them the singing, and then the plain preaching, and he put now 
and then a question which the missionary would stop and answer. 
When the talking stopped and there came a little lull I had a half- 
hour’s chat with the old man through an interpreter. He had one 
of his sacred books wrapped up carefully, which he unwrapped and 
showed me, and read me something from it; and then he put it 
aside awhile. I noticed while he was talking to me he had his 
hand in this little bag—a prayer-bag in which, with that hook so 
hung to his girdle, and with a place for his thumb on one side and 
the fingers on the other, he was busy moving his hand all the 
time. J asked him what he was doing. ‘‘Why, I am counting off 
my beads—saying my prayers.’’ Said I, ‘‘ You don’t want them ; 
let me have them.’’ He smiled and said, ‘‘ They don’t do me any 
good.’’ So presently he handed me over the string of beads and I 
gave him half a rupee of silver and told him I would be glad if he 
would take that and I would take his treasure ; and he said it was 


21 


no longer of any use to him. I pointed him to Jesus; and he 
listened to me and tried to upset me by quotations from his book ; 
and then listened and listened and wanted to know more of my 
Master ; and when my time was up and I arose to leave, and he 
gave me his hand, he said, ‘‘I will be your disciple.’’ ‘0,’ I 
said, ‘‘I don’t want you; I will turn you over to my Lord, Jesus 
Christ ;’’ and I came on my way. 


““RAW HEATHEN,”’’ 


Look now at a very different picture, which I saw in the imme- 
diate vicinity of a little village called Bahlaj, where two years and 
a-half before we had only fifteen converts, the overflow from 
Bombay ;—and that shows you how missions propagate them- 
selves; you can’t keepthem in fences. We had a field assigned us 
in northern India—you might as well assign limits to the rising 
tide of the Atlantic Ocean as to assign a narrow field to James M. 
Thoburn and his fellow-missionaries and the Methodist Church 
anywhere on the face of the earth. John Wesley told an everlasting 
truth concerning it when he said ‘‘The world is my parish.”’ 
Well, pardon this Pauline digression! Fifteen of these Gujerati 
converts from Bombay got up into the region of Baroda; of course 
our missionaries followed them, and in two and a-half years they 
had become fourteen hundred. I wish we had such success as that 
all over Philadelphia and Pennsylvania. The missionaries extem- 
porized a little camp-meeting under the banyan trees for Dr. Goucher, _ 
Bishop Thoburn and myself to meet these converts ; we went there 
and found them gathered from scores of little villages. When 
I speak of villages, I do not mean what you call a village here ; 
I mean simply a little collection of mud huts—perhaps, ten, twenty, 
fifty, one hundred of them—in which human beings live and from 
which they go forth to their daily toil in the fields. In villages of 
that sort, within twenty miles, these fourteen hundred Christians 
lived ; and twelve hundred of them got out to see the American 
strangers ; and they had a morning and afternoon of holy song and 
delightful addresses and the utterance of Christian experiences and 
exhortation ; and then in the afternoon, as we drew near the close 
of the services, Dr. Goucher and I had the honor and the pleasure 
to baptize two hundred and twenty-five persons, mostly recent con- 
verts, including twenty-five or thirty children of those converts, 
many of them four or five years old, running around the grounds 
clad in nothing except the brown silk in which they were born. 
Bishop Thoburn strictly questioned all the adults before we 
baptized them. They were arranged in rows, sitting on the ground, 


22 


and they were closely questioned somewhat thus: ‘‘ Do you believe 
in one. God?’ Douvyou believe in)-Jésus-Christ'??’. ‘* Do. you 
forsake your idols—have you put away every token of idolatry ?’’ 
‘‘ Will you forsake’’ this and that and the other? ‘‘ Will you give 
up especially Ghali ?’’ which is the Hindostanee word for the 
obscene abuse of your mother and your grandmother. They do not 
swear; their swearing is the obscenity of abusing each other's 
ancestors, and especially female ancestors: ‘‘ Will you break away 
from all that and every other wicked thing?’’ And when they 
had answered many such searching questions I said to one of the 
missionaries: ‘‘ Do these poor fellows and these poor women know 
anything about the Apostles’ Creed?’’ He took the question 
forward and said ‘‘Our American bishop wants to know whether 
you know anything about the Apostles’ Creed ;’’ and then said to 
the interpreter, ‘‘ Ask them and let them try it;’’ and then those 
adults repeated the Apostles’ Creed from beginning to end better 
than I have often heard it repeated in America, unless it was read 
from the book ; and could have done the same with the 23d Psalm, 
the Ten Commandments, and the Lord’s Prayer. ‘‘Raw heathen,’’ 
I have heard said of these peoplein Europe andin America. ‘‘ Raw 
heathen.’’ Yes, such they were; such ¢hey were. How, then, did 
they come to know these things? Because for four or six months 
pastor teachers, converted men, knowing almost nothing but Jesus 
Christ, went through these villages every evening when the laborers 
came home from the fields and held village prayer services, in 
which the New Testament was read and plainly expounded, and 
the Apostles’ Creed was taught, and the Lord’s Prayer was taught, 
and the Ten Commandments were taught; so that I say although 
they had all been ‘‘raw heathen,’’ when we visited them they were 
penitent Christian believers. I said to Dr. Parker—(you know his 
stalwart form and noble face and excellent work, many of you; 
if there had been a missionary Bishop elected by the last General 
Conference it would have been he;) I said to him, ‘‘Dr. Parker, 
tell me frankly, when you thus win twenty, or one hundred, or two 
hundred of these raw heathen and baptize them, how many are 
steadfast after a few years?’’ He answered: ‘‘ We have done that 
again and again; and where they are properly cared for by their 
pastors, after a year or two years you will find ninety-five per cent. 
of them every time with their faces toward the cross, leading good 
lives and doing their best to break away from their habitual sins.”’’ 
‘‘Raw heathen ?’’ God send us more of them, and send us the 
grace to strengthen and uphold them, and to present them at last 
before Him with exceeding joy. 


na) 


WOMAN’S FOREIGN MISSIONARY SOCIETY. 


I cannot speak fully now of the Woman’s Foreign Missionary 
Society, but must give you one brilliant picture of its work which 
must ever abide in my memory. Iam bound to say that its repre- 
sentatives, no less’ than the missionaries sent out by the parent 
society, gave us perpetual opportunities for talk, talk, talk, with 
unlimited tea, tea, tea. 


In Madras, the first morning, before we got through our Chota- 
haziri or little breakfast, (just simply a cup of tea and two very 
little bits of toast served before we got out of bed in the morning), 
a saintly lady who is in charge of our Woman’s Foreign Missionary 
work in that city, sent us word that we must surely come over at 
11 o’clock and see some of the work of her teachers; and there, in 
the humble missionary home in which she lives, we saw forty 
dusky little maidens'of the higher castes of that city, sent at good 

prices for tuition to this school, because it is the best school to be 
found in Madras; and those little maidens were dressed in the 
finest silks that India could produce ; and jewels—they had jewels 
in the tops of their ears and in the bottoms of their ears; they had 
them in their noses; they had them on all the joints of their fingers 
and even on their thumbs, on their wrists and on their elbows and 
on their ankles and on their toes, so that they fairly jingled with 
jewels whenever they stirred; and they stirred a great deal, because 
they went through some very striking calisthenics and some very 
lively singing. Beside these, and somewhat younger, were, per- 
haps, twenty little girls without a jewel, in the plainest clothing— 
waifs of society, picked up by saints of the living God, out of the 
dust of heathenism and out of the deepest poverty—trained in the 
orphanage and brought to the knowledge of the blessed Christ ; 
and there was also there that wonderful personage whose biography 
I wish every Christian before me might read, and that it might be 
in every Sunday School library and in every family in the United 
States—Sooboonagam Ammal—a high caste woman, with all her 
privileges and wealth of jewelry three years ago, taught of Jesus in 
the Zenana until she wanted to come to him; but how could she 
break away, and have her death celebrated by her friends (as it was 
celebrated afterwards)? But two years ago she came to Miss 
Stephens, cast herself down at her feet, and said, ‘‘I am your 
Christmas present ;’’ and from that hour she had broken utterly 
away from all her old connections. I saw her again and again, 
with no jewels, going forth daily into the Zenana, and to the scrub- 
bing of floors and the humblest of work—a true, noble, consecrated 


24 


saint—bound to get to the bottom of society, and if she can, also to 
the top of it, and to be a faithful missionary among her own people. 

I saw also a Zenana woman who, until that day, had never 
seen the face of a white man—had seen no man’s face near at hand 
excepting the face of her husband and son and of the servants 
about her house; but having been converted some years ago, ina 
quiet way in the zenana, and having learned to love Jesus, she at 
last persuaded her husband (having laid by all her jewels) to let 
her come to that house, and see the little children, and hear them 
sing, and see these American strangers. She had holes in her ears 
almost as big as a copper cent—the lower lobe being as large as the 
upper, to hang large jewels there to please the eyes of her husband 
and her son. She sat there hardly daring to cast her eyes around ; 
and yet she gathered courage, and when the meeting went on, and 
was almost over, with sweet voice she sang ‘‘ All the Way Along 
it is Jesus.’? The next day we laid the corner-stone of the new 
orphanage which Miss Stephens is building. And now let me tell 
you a strange fact. The great pavilion in which we met, which was 
twice as large as this audience room, was adorned with beautiful 
tapestries and hangings; flags were suspended along the main 
street of the city a half-mile each way, and lights at night along 
the same street for the same distance; great bamboo towers were 
built, fifty feet high, hung around in the evening with hundreds of 
lights, and all this was done by a native heathen gentleman, because 
he had come to believe that this school work which these blessed 
Christian women are doing is philanthropic and excellent work. 
This high government officer, this solid merchant and man of 
wealth, did all this with a cheerful heart, as a kind of unconscious 
testimony on his own part to the way in which the kings of the 
world and the wealth of the world (when Isaiah’s splendid visions 
are fulfilled) are to be brought and laid at Jesus’ feet. One-third 
of the pavilion was shut off by a curtain behind which were three 
hundred Zenana women who, until that day, had never been out 
into the world and seen the faces of white men ; and we noticed, as 
the exercises of speech and song went on that the bamboo curtain 
was raised six inches, and long rows of brilliant eyes were peering 
out and keen ears were listening ; and when the service ended, our 
benefactor, Mr. P. Vencatachellum who had done all this work 
of preparation, including ample refreshments, leaving Miss 
Stephens nothing in the way of expense that day except to pay for 
the corner-stone itself, took us there to that curtain and introduced 
us to his wife, who shrank and drew back as though from pollu- 
tion, and yet did touch the white man’s hand, as did a few others of 


25 


the women there. We saw the bright-eyed, saintly Sooboonagam 
Ammal moving around among them, getting the frowns of some 
and the indifferent greeting of others, and the wondering looks of 
many. They knew what she had left; and only a few months 
before had had a great public meeting for the reprehension of the 
rich woman who could break her caste and leave her friends and 
have her funeral publicly celebrated by them before she died. O, 
my friends ! do not such facts open a rift into darkest India? 


MAGNIFICENT OPPORTUNITIES. 


Now let me add, if only our beloved church were able, (nay, we 
are able), were so awake as to be welling to lay such gifts on the 
altar of the Foreign Missionary Society, that we might add twenty- 
five per cent. only for the work in India next year, and as much the 
year after, I tell you my sober conviction, (which is as clear as any- 
thing which I have profoundly studied and about which I know the 
facts), we might double the number of our communicants and 
pupils, and our influence for good, in India, in forty-eight months ; © 
and in the early years of the century to come, if the dear Lord shall 
only give us reserved energies of the Holy Spirit, for which my 
praying heart often lays claimin humble faith—in the opening 
years of the coming century I see nothing to prevent a million 
converts in India ina decade. The people are forsaking the old 
religions and are disgusted with them. The British Government 
carries with it all around the globe the Bible, and Protestant Chris- 
tianity, and the form of sound words in the English liturgy, and is 
a savor of good on these lines; and I, for one, am glad and 
grateful for this influence of the nation from which we sprang. 


THE GOUCHER SCHOOLS. 


A final word—I beg your pardon for detaining you so long—a 
final word. I have said that my traveling companion in this long 
tour was Rev. Dr. Goucher, President of the Woman’s College of 
Baltimore. Many of you may not have known until you saw my 
account of it in our church papers recently, that for fifteen years 
Dr. Goucher had been supporting more than a hundred primary 
village schools in India, at an aggregate cost of more than a hun- 
dred thousand dollars, (it only costs thirty or forty dollars a year to 
get a Christian teacher). These schools flowered out into a fine high 
school in Moradabad, for both girls and boys. Will you take this 
sober statement and put it into your memories? These schools 
have educated pastors and presiding elders and pastor-teachers and 


26 


local preachers and day-school teachers, through whose influence, 
as the reports of the presiding elders distinctly show, in these fif- 
teen years 27,000 converts have been added to our church. That is 
the sort of school we believe in. I met a minister of another 
branch of the Christian Church—I will notname it—I do not mean to 
criticise it—every church must judge for itself—who had been, with 
six other university graduates for about fifteen years teaching a 
great school with a college course in it; and now it has six hun- 
dred pupils. I heard him say that in all those fifteen years he was 
not aware that a single one of those students had been converted. 
Our beloved church in every land believes that when the Lord Jesus 
Christ said, ‘‘ Go ye, teach all nations,’’ He did not mean simply to 
send out schoolmasters ; because, in another form of that same 
commission, it runs, ‘‘Go ye into all the world and preach the 
gospel to every creature’’: and so our teachers are missionaries and 
our missionaries are teachers; their prayers and their lessons and 
their love for souls all work together; they lead their pupils to 
Christ. 

I will not take time to tell of the awful famine; that dreadful 
scourge of India was made directly the means of putting under our 
care thousands of children and young women; and many who a 
year ago were immersed in heathenism and ready to perish for lack 
of bread, under our care have within one year been taught and con- 
verted and brought to a happy Christian life; and we see how the 
great power of God is able to bring good out of evil. 


HOME AGAIN. 


I am glad to be back again ; I am glad to have rested for three 
weeks in flowery Japan; I am glad to say that on the last Sunday 
IT spent in Tokio, riding six miles through a fierce rain in a little 
narrow jinrikisha, with two bare-legged Japanese to draw me— 
when I got to the little church in a heavy rain I found one hundred 
and thirty native Japanese, and through an interpreter preached to 
them the simplest gospel I could command; and, having closed, I 
sat down ; but, during the singing, said to myself, ‘‘Why hadn’t 
you the courage, here where the Japanese are too Frenchy and polite 
to put religious experience straight to men, why hadn’t you the 
courage to ask if anybody wanted to be a Christian?’’ And so, 
before they rose to sing the doxology, I gave a brief exhortation 
and invited any who wished to come to Christ to rise and stand ; 
seven arose—five young men, some of whom are students in the 
Imperial University, and two middle-aged women. ‘Then I asked 
them forward and they came and sat down, and I tried to tell them 


a] 


the simple way of faith. And somehow or other, I felt as though 
my license to preach had been renewed; and I am ready to go 
around the globe again if only I may be God’s voice to bring seven 
sinners—especially seven heathen sinners—to the mercy-seat. I 
am very glad to be back here. ‘‘ There’s no place like home ;’’ 
and, next after that dear spot where your wife and children are, there 
is no place like a great Christian community in which you elbow 
up against like-minded, hearty, sympathetic fellow-workers in the 
kingdom of Jesus Christ. I am back again. How long I shall be 
back Icannot tell. You speak your word of welcome; I thank you; 
it shows that you cordially appreciate my return; though, as one 
of the wide-ranging itinerants of the church, I cannot command 
very much time in the city I love so well. Next after my official 
duties I am here again to lend a hand of help to our City Mis- 
sionary and Church Extension Society, of which I am one of the 
officers. I am here to help Methodists in Philadelphia to under- 
stand a little better how much they need, for their own sakes, a 
good strong Christian school for their girls; I am here to resume 
my place among the managers of our general Board of Church 
Extension. Iam here to lend at least a heart of sympathy to our 
local Methodist philanthropic institutions and to our numerous. 
churches. I cannot be with you constantly. I am here and there 
and everywhere on my official errands. 

I hope to run with you a little longer in this pilgrim path, and 
trust that through God’s infinite mercy we shall meet at length on 
the golden streets with our loved and lamented ones at the right 
hand of the Father, and cast our starry crowns at our enthroned 
Redeemer’s feet with immortal rapture. 


At the conclusion of Bishop Foss’ address, the audience 
individually engaged in a warm handshaking with the 
honored guest of the evening. 


28 


NOTE: 


Information relative to additional copies 
of this pamphlet can be had by addressing 
Clarence D. Antrim, Secretary of the Phila- 
delphia Laymen’s Association of the Metho- 
dist Episcopal Church, 1011 Chestnut Street, 
Philadelphia, Pa., U.S. A. 


BISHOP FOSS WELCOMED 


A Cordial Reception to Celebrate 
His Return From India, 


CLERGY AND LAYMEN AS HOSTS 


Dr. Foss Gives an Interesting Account of 
Work Being Done in India by 
Methodist Episcopal 
Missionaries. 


As a welcome home after his travels in India, 
Rey. Cyrus D. Foss, Methodist Episcopal Bishop 
of Philadelphia, was tendered a reception by the 
ministry and laity of the churches of this city at 
the Arch Street M. E. Church, Broad and Arch 
Streets, last night. The edifice, decorated with 
plants and flowers, was crowded. Over the pulpit 
was the word “Welcome” in flowers, above that 
was ‘“‘ Christ is Risen,’ in letters formed by lighted 
gas jets,and above all two large American flags 
were draped. * * 

After the Bishop hed concluded his address the 


| audience sang “ My Country ‘Tis of Thee” and 


then a large number of people extended a per- 
sonal welcome to the Bishop. 


Philadelphia Record, April 22, 1898. 


30 


GLADLY GREETED 
ON HIS RETURN 


BISHOP FOSS GIVEN AN ADDRESS BY 
MEMBERS OF HIS CHURCH. 


WAS ABROAD FOR SIX MONTHS) 


The Methodist Episcopal Dignitary Gives 
an Interesting Account of His Experiences 


in India—Warm Praise for British Rule | 


in That Country. Some Wonderful Hle- 


phants. 


Bishop Cyrus D. Foss, D. D., LL. D., Resident 
Bishop of Philadelphia, was given a hearty recep- 
tion last evening in the Arch Street Methodist 
Episcopal Church, Broad and Arch streets, on his 
return from India and Malaysia, by the ministry 
and laity of the Methodist Episcopal Churches of 
the city. The Rey. Dr. W. W. Ramsey, pastor of 
Arch Street Church, presided. An address of 
welcome was read by the Rey. Dr. T. B. Neely, of 
the Union Methodist Episcopal Church. <A beau- 
tifully engrossed copy of it, bound in album form, 


and signed by the ministers and laymen who con- | 


stituted the reception committee, was presented 
to the Bishop. Bishop Foss acknowledged the 
ardor of the welcome accorded him and said that 
he was delighted to be once more among his | 
friends. * 


Philadelphia Times, April 22, 1898. 


| 


WELCOMED HOME. 


ENTHUSIASTIC RECEPTION TENDERED 
BISHOP CYRUS D. FOSS. 


Ministry and Laity of the Methodist Epis- 
copal Church Unite to Honor Him—Ad- 
dress Presented by the Rev. Dr. Neely. 


The ministry and laity of the Methodist Epis- 
copal churches, in this city, united last night in 
tendering an enthusiastic reception to Bishop 
Cyrus D. Foss, D. D., LL. D.,in Arch Street Church, 
Broad and Arch Streets, in honor of his return 
from India and Malaysia. The church, which 
was filled to its utmost capacity by Methodists 
from all over the city, was prettily decorated with 
potted plants and flags. The Rev, Dr. W. W. 
Ramsey, pastor of Arch Street Church, presided, 
and the Vice Presidents were C. C. Hancock, ex- 
Governor Pattison and John Field. * * #* 

At the close of Bishop Foss’s adGress, which was 
listened to throughout with the deepest interest 
and pleasure, manifested at times by applause, the 
patriotic hymn, ‘“‘My Country, ’tis of Thee,” was 
sung by all present. 

The benediction was then pronounced after 
which all present were given an opportunity to 
extend a personal welcome to Bishop Foss. 


Philadelphia Public Ledger, April 22, 1898. 


31 


| 


The Bishop Tells of the Great Achieve- 


BISHOP FOSS’ 
WELCOMING. 


and Laity Unite 


a Cordial Public 
Reception. 


Ministry in 


SAFE JOURNEY OVER GLOBE, 


Missionary Work in India the! 
Object of the Trip, but Strange 
Sights Were Seen. 


METHODISM’S MANY MISSIONS, 


ments of the Methodist Type of 
Christianity—Seventy-Seven 
Thousand Communicants, 


Bishop Cyrus D. Foss, resident Bishop of Phil- 
adelphia, was given an enthusiastic public recep- 
tion last evening in the Arch Street Methodist 
Episcopal Church, corner Broad and Arch Streets, 
by the ministry and laity of the Methodist Epis- 
copal churches of Philadelphia, in honor of his 
return from India and Malaysia. The church 
was tastefully decorated with potted plants and 


flags. The meeting was presided over by the 
Rey. Dr. W. W. Ramsey, pastor of Arch Street 
Church as 


At the close of the address the Bishop shook 
hands with nearly every person in the vast 


audience. 
Philadelphia Press, April 22, 1898. 


A ROUSING TALK 
BY BISHOP FOSS 


Wonders Which He Beheld 
in India Were Graphi- 
cally Described. 


METHODISM’S PROGRESS 


The Torch of Christianity I]lum- 
ines the Regions Oppressed 
by Gloom of Paganism 


Cyrus D. Foss, D.D., LL.D., resident Bishop 
of Philadelphia, was given an enthusiastic pub- | 
lic reception last evening in the Arch Street 
Methodist Episcopal Church, corner Broad and | 
Arch Streets, in honor of his return from India | 
and Malaysia, by the ministry and laity of the | 
Methodist Churches of Philadelphia. The church 
was tastefully decorated, The meeting was pre- | 
sided over by Rev. Dr. W. W. Ramsey. The vice- 
presidents were C. C. Hancock, ex-Governor 
Robert E. Pattison and Hon. Jno. Field. 

The address of welcome was read by the Rev. 
Dr. T. B. Neely. A beautiful engrossed copy of 
the address, bound in album form, and signed by 
the ministers and laymen who constituted the 
Reception Committee, was presented to the 
Bishop. 

The address was signed: The ministry by T. B. 
Neely, S. W. Thomas, F. B. Lynch, J.8. J. McCon- 
nell, S. W. Gehrett, J. G. Bickerton, J.S. Hughes, 
T.C. Murphey, J. R. T. Gray, W. L. McDowell, 
W. W. Ramsey; from the laity by C. C. Hancock, 
John Field, John E. James, Arthur M. Burton, 
Clarence D. Antrim, William H. Heisler, Robert E. 
Pattison, Charles Scott, J. W. Boughton, F. W. 
Tunnell, Avery D. Harrington, Reception Com- 
mittee. 

In reply Bishop Foss delivered an able address, 
and among other things he said : 

* * * * * * s 

The bishop was heartily congratulated at the 

close of his interesting discourse. 


Philadelphia Inquirer, April 22, 1898. 


Wea 
wig * 


PAMPHLET BINDER 
Syracuse, N. Y. 
kton, Calif. * 


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